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Our Vision
Our vision is a world in which there is a diverse health workforce that has the competencies, opportunities, and courage to ensure everyone has a fair opportunity to attain their full health potential. We call this Health Workforce Equity.
Why is this Important?
While health disparities is a growing field of health equity research, the Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity (Mullan Institute) focuses specifically on how the health workforce can address these problems. Our premise is that the people who deliver services are among the primary mechanisms of change (or lack thereof). The composition, training, distribution, willingness to serve the poor, practice patterns, and working conditions of the entire health workforce (home care workers, support staff, allied clinicians, public health, doctors, and nurses) are critically important factors determining whether, and what kind of care is provided to the most disadvantaged sectors of our society.
The health workforce exists in the context of a complex ecosystem of policies, programs, and practices driven by stakeholder interests. From educational funding streams at the state and federal level, to regulatory oversite of professions, to health care payment policies and organizational rules driving workflow, many organizational players determine the “who, where, how, to whom, and under what conditions” health workers deliver services. An important step in holding these organizational players accountable for their effect on the health workforce is to measure performance. To what extent do we have the right people coming into the health workforce trained and oriented in the right way, distributed according to population need, serving high-needs patients, and working in safe and fair conditions?
The health workforce exists in the context of a complex ecosystem of policies, programs, and practices driven by stakeholder interests. From educational funding streams at the state and federal level, to regulatory oversite of professions, to health care payment policies and organizational rules driving workflow, many organizational players determine the “who, where, how, to whom, and under what conditions” health workers deliver services. An important step in holding these organizational players accountable for their effect on the health workforce is to measure performance. To what extent do we have the right people coming into the health workforce trained and oriented in the right way, distributed according to population need, serving high-needs patients, and working in safe and fair conditions?
Why Here?Located in the Department of Health Policy at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., the Mullan Institute not only draws upon the resources from the National Capital Area, but also GW's diverse and distinguished faculty. The Mullan Institute consists of a group of faculty and staff from the Milken Institute School of Public Health, School of Nursing, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, School of Business, Graduate School of Education & Human Development, and the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration. The group represents an array of disciplines, including economics; anthropology; health services research; and education; as well as the professional perspectives of medicine; nursing; physician assistants; and pharmacists. This is consistent with GW’s goal of building on its unique location, expertise in governance and policy orientation, and its commitment to cross disciplinary scholarship. |